I know it’s been quiet here (I’ve been grading papers), but I wanted to give you a quick glimpse at the ScienceBloggers’ progress to date on the DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge. Here’s the bar graph:
You’ll notice that two blogs (Deep Sea News and Retrospectacle) have exceeded their goals and one (The Questionable Authority) is tantalizingly close.
And then there are the rest of us.
Do you suppose some additional prizes for donors would help? As it happens, Seed is offering some!
I’ve just been told that Seed is putting up $15,000 in matching funds for the ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge, as part of the Seed Media Group Science Literacy Grants program.
As it stands, we’ve already raised just over $13,000. With the match from Seed, that becomes $26,000.
Go check out the challenges and help us take advantage of the full match!
Today is day 6 of our month-long DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge 2007, and here’s the current progress:
We’re in the middle of the fourth day of the month-long DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge 2007, and thanks to his generous readers Mike Dunford has raised 100% of his initial goal, funding classroom projects that will impact 370 students.
The awesomeness of that is pretty breathtaking.
In light of Mike’s impressive milestone, I thought this might be a good time to check in on the progress of the other ScienceBloggers participating in the challenge. Here are some “Top 5” lists:
Mike the Mad Biologist has mounted a challenge in the drive! Help him make some teachers and kids happy.
We’re in day 2 of the ScienceBlogs Blogger Challenge, during which we’re working with DonorsChoose to raise some money for classroom projects. The amount contributed by ScienceBlogs readers is creeping up on $4000, which is pretty impressive.
But it looks like the real competition may be for which blogger can offer readers the best incentive to donate.
I thought I was doing pretty well with my offer of poetry, sprog artwork, or a basic concepts post written to order. (Indeed, we’re already on the hook for an illustrated poem.) But my SciBlings have upped the ante:
You know from my last post that we’re working with DonorsChoose to raise some money for public school teachers who are trying to give their students the engaging educational experiences they deserve. You also know that our benevolent overlords at Seed will be randomly selecting some donors to receive nifty prizes (details about this to be posted as soon as I get them).
But I’d like to sweeten the deal by offering some incentive to everyone who donates to my challenge. Here’s what you can get:
Maybe you remember that fund-raiser we did for DonorsChoose last June. We’re kicking off another today. But this time, it’s not just ScienceBlogs bloggers — partners like Google, Yahoo!, Six Apart, and Federated Media are watching the efforts across the whole blogosphere to see which blog has the most generous and engaged readers.
But before we get to the frenzy of competition, let’s start with what matters: the school kids yearning to learn.
As I wrote last year:
Those of us who blog here at ScienceBlogs think science is cool, important, and worth understanding. If you’re reading the blogs here, chances are you feel the same way.
A lot of us fell in love with science because of early experiences in school — teachers who made science intriguing, exciting, maybe a little bit dangerous. But tightening budgets are making it harder and harder for public school teachers to provide the books, equipment, and field trips to make science come alive for kids.
DonorsChoose.org gives us a way to help teachers get the job done. A bunch of us at ScienceBlogs have set up Blogger Challenges which will let us (and that includes you) contribute to worthy school projects in need of financial assistance. We’ll be able to track our progress right on the DonorsChoose site. And — because we like a little friendly competition — we’ll be updating you periodically as to which blogger’s readers are getting his or her challenge closest to its goal.
You don’t need to give a barrel of money to help the kids — as little as $10 can help. You’re joining forces with a bunch of other people, and all together, your small contributions can make a big difference.
This year, the challenge runs for the entire month of October. A number of ScienceBloggers have already put together challenges, but I suspect a few more may arrive fashionably late. Here’s who’s in so far:
A Blog Around the Clock (challenge here)
Adventures in Ethics and Science (challenge here)
Aetiology (challenge here)
Cognitive Daily (challenge here)
Deep Sea News (challenge here)
Evolgen (challenge here)
Gene Expression (challenge here)
Omni Brain (challenge here)
On Being a Scientist and a Woman (challenge here)
The Questionable Authority (challenge here)
Retrospectacle (challenge here)
The Scientific Activist (challenge here)
Stranger Fruit (challenge here)
Terra Sigillata (challenge here)
Thoughts From Kansas (challenge here)
Thus Spake Zuska (challenge here)
Uncertain Principles (challenge here)
How It Works:
Mike Dunford just passed on most excellent news: Six Apart is giving away $30 gift certificates for my favorite philanthropic organization, DonorsChoose. Here are the details:
The school year just started again for my kids, and it’s pretty hard to escape the conclusion that as public school teachers are being asked to do more, their resources are dwindling. During the summer, the school mailed out the (extensive) lists of basic school supplies needed by kids at each grade level — the basic stuff, like crayons and pencils and paper, that during the last millennium when I was in grade school were included in the classroom funding like desks and electricity.
It strikes me that as a society, we need to revisit our funding priorities. But in the meantime, there are legions of cash-strapped teachers trying to spark some excitement around learning. Even if their school districts are tapped out, there are folks who value education who can help.
High on that list is DonorsChoose, an organization that helps teachers with classroom projects and other student learning experiences get the funding they need from ordinary folks in cyberspace who chip in what they can. (You may remember that ScienceBlogs readers raised some serious cash for such projects last spring. It’s also worth noting that DonorsChoose underwent a recent expansion and is now accepting proposals from teachers in all 50 states in the US.)
If you’re a school teacher trying to spin straw into gold — or you know a school teacher with grand plans and scarce resources — I’m posting to encourage you to consider creating and submitting a student project proposal to DonorsChoose. You don’t need to be a professional grant writer to do it — just a teacher with a vision for making your students’ learning experience better (and a list of the resources you’d need to make that happen) who can describe your students and your plan in a one page essay.
That doesn’t sound too hard, does it?
Here are some more specifics: